Few musicians of any instrument have had as much impact as soprano Dawn Upshaw.

It starts with her great career as a performer, including nearly 300 appearances with the Metropolitan Opera. Five Grammy Awards. Premieres of John Harbison’s “The Great Gatsby,” Kaija Saariaho’s “L’Amour de Loin,” Osvaldo Golijov’s “Ainadamar” and “Ayre,” works all written especially for her voice.

She was the first vocalist to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship (in 2007), and the following year was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

And her impact will continue, long after she’s finished performing, with her students. Upshaw mentors many of the future’s great vocalists, not just every summer in her role as head of vocal arts at Tanglewood, but also in her position as artistic director of the vocal program at Bard College of Music in New York.

Upshaw has chosen some of the repertory for her upcoming Rockport Music recital, this Sunday with pianist Gilbert Kalish, using her students’ ideas.

“In a class I teach at Bard I have them put together their own concerts,” she says. “One student chose some songs from American women composers of the last two centuries, and Rebecca Clarke was part of the group.

“I was really touched by the directness and simplicity of the songs,” she says, “and there was enough complexity of rhythm and harmony to draw me in. And also the quality of the writing, and her choice of poets. Gil didn’t know them either, and since we try to create something new on our programs each season, we included them.”

The recital also includes Ives songs — and Kalish performing the “Alcotts” movement of Ives’s “Concord Sonata” — as well as vocal settings by Schubert, Bartok, Bolcom, and works by American composer Sheila Silver.

“She teaches at Stoney Brook, and Gil teaches there too,” Upshaw says. “These are love songs, and they are all quite different.” The short cycle, “On Loving,” was written in memory of Kalish’s wife Diane, who passed away in 2011. The three songs use poetry by Shakespeare, St. Vincent Millay and Gibran.

“Silver has recently been to India, and studied raga,” Upshaw says, “and the last song is a kind of combination of Indian and American music. There is really nothing quite like it.”

Upshaw does not set out deliberately to include women composers in her concerts — “not at all,” she says. “Gil and I just want to do music that we are in awe of, and has moved us. But we need more conscious programming,” she insists.

“If not equal time, we just need mainly to spark the curiosity and talent of young women. So that somebody coming to a concert is really exposed to good things. I think it’s sad that we have to search pretty hard to find music by women composers from the mid-century. Right now we’re living in an age full of women composers.”

Upshaw and Kalish have been giving recitals for “close to 30 years now,” she says. “I am consciously slowing down, but Gil is the busiest musician I know.

“I certainly do not want it to come to a stop,” she says about singing in concert. “Gil and I still want to present extraordinary music, with the strongest performances that we can give.

“Things are always evolving and changing,” she says. “I am learning a lot from my students. They are doing programs that are unique, involving multimedia and all sorts of different things. They are taking music in a new direction, and I’m certainly not somebody who is fearful of what will happen to the song recital.”

Soprano Dawn Upshaw and pianist Gilbert Kalish perform music of Schubert, Ives, Clarke, Bartok, Bolcom and Silver on Sunday, April 22 at the Shalin Liu Performance Center in Rockport. For tickets and information visit www.rockportmusic.org or call 978-546-7391.

Keith Powers covers music and the arts for GateHouse Media and WBUR’s ARTery. Follow @PowersKeith; email to keithmichaelpowers@gmail.com